The materials for the present essay were acquired principally in the same voyage, from Captain Flinders's account of which a general notion of the opportunities afforded for observation may be gathered. It seems necessary, however, 534] to present in one view the circumstances under which our collections were formed, both in the Investigator's voyage, and subsequently, during a stay of eighteen months in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Island; as also to state other sources from which additional materials have been obtained. By this means the reader will be better enabled to judge how far I am entitled to make those observations of a more general nature which he will find in the following pages.
The first part of New Holland examined in Captain Flinders's voyage was the South Coast, on various and distant points of which, and on several of its adjacent islands we landed, in circumstances more or less favorable for our researches. The survey of this coast took place from West to East, and our first anchorage was in King George Third's Sound, in 35° S. lat. and 118° E. lon. In this port we remained for three weeks, in the most favorable season for our pursuits; and our collection of plants, made chiefly on its shores and a few miles into the interior of the country, amounts to nearly 500 species, exclusive of those belonging to the class Cryptogamia, which, though certainly bearing a small proportion to phænogamous plants, were not, it must be admitted, equally attended to. At our second anchorage, Lucky Bay of Captain Flinders's chart, in 34° S. lat. and about 4° to the eastward of King George's Sound, we remained only three days, but even in that short time added upwards of 100 species to our former collection.
Goose-Island Bay, in the same latitude and hardly one degree to the eastward of the second anchorage, where our stay was also very short, afforded us but few new plants; and the remaining parts of the South Coast, on five distant points of which we landed, as well as on seven of its adjacent Islands, were still more barren, altogether producing only 200 additional species. The smallness of this num-
